shaka-what? it's shaka-licious!

I love trying new recipes! I would love to be basing my blog around food, but at the moment I don't feel like I could commit properly to it (test running new recipes regularly or finding new places to review) so I just read everyone elses and enjoy.

One of my favourite food blogs is Smitten Kitchen, Deb there is a genius - not only is she sweet but she finds the best recipes, writes about them in such a way that you find yourself falling in love with every dish and every ingredient, and then she photographs everything she does so beautiful!
Her recipes are always really well explained and easy to follow; she throws in some great advice for the novice but also gets into discussion about the technical sides of things and ingredients for the more advanced foodie. 

Her latest post was a dish called 'shakshuka'; it came up on my blog reader just as I was sitting down to work out this weeks shopping list - and I'm calling it fate, because I'm so instantly in love! Her description says it's "an Israeli dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce", my description say its: simply delicoius!
It's a beautifully balanced dish - too often I find these tomato dishes too heavy and rich, but this was perfect. I had to add ground cumin to my shopping list and I'm looking forward to finding some more recipes to use it in because the combination of the cumin and paprika was just so warming and yummy.  


I'm looking forward to adding it to my regular weeknight dinner rotation because it really is so simple to throw together, I hope you try it and enjoy it as much as I have.

Photo and recipe comes from Smitten Kitchen

Shakshuka [Eggs Poached in Spicy Tomato Sauce]

Serves 4 to 6
1/4 cup olive oil
Chillies stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped (Smitten Kitchen says: 5 Anaheim chiles or 3 jalapeños - in my supermarket the chillies weren't labelled though plus I'm not a big fan of spicy spicy, so I just grabbed 1 long red chilli and left it at that!) 
1 small yellow onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed then sliced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon paprika
1 800g can whole peeled tomatoes, undrained
Kosher salt, to taste
6 eggs
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled (I used danish style, it's so lovely and creamy)
1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley
Warm pitas, for serving

Heat oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add chillies and onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden brown, about 6 minutes. Add garlic, cumin, and paprika, and cook, stirring frequently, until garlic is soft, about 2 more minutes.
 Put tomatoes and their liquid into a medium bowl and crush with your hands. Add crushed tomatoes and their liquid to skillet along with 1/2 cup water, reduce heat to medium, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened slightly, about 15 minutes. Season sauce with salt.
Crack eggs over sauce so that eggs are evenly distributed across sauce’s surface. Cover skillet and cook until yolks are just set, about 5 minutes. Using a spoon, baste the whites of the eggs with tomato mixture, being careful not to disturb the yolk. Sprinkle shakshuka with feta and parsley and serve with pitas, for dipping.